Russian President Vladimir Putin said the US “tricked” Russia regarding a NATO treaty. The treaty was NATO would not expand eastward, and would never include Ukraine. The US reneged on both, said Putin, adding the US expanded NATO toward Russia “five times."American journalist Tucker Carlson interviewed Putin at the Kremlin this week, with footage released on his website Thursday evening. Putin gave a long account of the history of the Russian state dating back to its establishment in 862, its victory in the Second World War when the Soviet Union “regained its historical lands,” up to the fall of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in 1991. “After 1991 when Russia expected that it would be welcomed into the brotherly family of civilized nations, nothing like this happened,” Putin told Carlson. “You tricked us.” “Of course I'm talking about the United States. The promise was NATO would not expand eastward,” he said. “But it happened five times, there were five waves of expansion.”“I want you as an American citizen and your viewers, to hear about this as well. The former Russian leadership assumed that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist,” Putin told Carlson. “And therefore, there were no longer any ideological dividing lines. Russia even agreed voluntarily and proactively to the collapse of the Soviet Union and believed that this would be understood by the so-called civilized west as an invitation for cooperation and association.”“That is what Russia was expecting, both from the United States and the so-called collective West as a whole,” he continued, describing a “new security system” many politicians were saying at the time “should be established in Europe,” to “help unify Germany,” and include the United States, Canada, Russia and other central European countries.”“But NATO needs not to expand. That's what was said. If NATO expands, everything would be just the same as during the Cold War, you were only closer to Russia's borders,” Putin said. “There was a moment when a rift started to grow between us.”“Now concerning Ukraine, the US leadership exerts pressure and all NATO members obediently vote, even if they do not like something.“I'll tell you what happened in this regard with Ukraine in 2008,” Putin said, “and NATO's expansion to the East.”“Well, we were promised no NATO to the east, not an inch to the east, as we were told,” Putin said. “And then what they said, well, it's not enshrined on paper, so we'll expand. So there were five waves of expansion, the Baltic states, the whole of Eastern Europe and so on.” “And now I come to the main thing. They have come to the Ukraine ultimately. On 2008, at the summit in Bucharest, they declared that the doors for Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO were open,” Putin said. “Now about how decisions are made there.”“Germany, France seem to be against it, as well as some other European countries,” Putin recalled. “But then, as it turned out, later with President Bush, he exerted pressure on us and we had to agree."“You see, they were pressed, they agreed (in 2008), and then they say Ukraine won't be in NATO. Well, it's nonsensical,” he said. “Who's there to talk to, I just don't understand. We're ready to talk."Putin said the US also supported a coup in Ukraine to overthrow leadership with a pro-Western opposition leader. “This is a coup d'etat,” Putin said. “So in 2008, the doors of NATO were open for Ukraine. In 2014, there was a coup d'etat persecuting those who did not accept the coup. And it was indeed a coup. They created a threat to Crimea, which we had to take under our protection. They launched the war in Donbas in 2014, with the use of aircraft and artillery against civilians. This is when it all started.”“The CIA did its job to complete the coup,” he continued. “But the political mistake was colossal. Why would they have to do that? All this could have been done legally, without victims, without military action. Without losing Crimea. We would have never considered even lifting a finger if it hadn't been for the bloody developments.”“We never agreed to NATO's expansion, we did not agree to NATO bases there without any discussion with us. For decades. We kept asking, don't do this. Don't do that,” Putin said.
